


Live Light in the Spring

by Jalapeno_Helen



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:36:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27686360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jalapeno_Helen/pseuds/Jalapeno_Helen
Summary: Loki and Steve run away together, as told from the perspective of others.
Relationships: Loki/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Live Light in the Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2012 for [this](https://norsekink.livejournal.com/7418.html?thread=14748922#t14748922) prompt ( _So, the trailer for [Moonrise Kingdom] has been freaking me out for weeks now, and I'd love to see a [Loki/Steve] AU with this. Could be just like the movie where they're twelve, or it could be that they're of drafting age and running away from bootcamp or something before they go off to war_ ). I explored a writing style that hopefully echoes the same dreamy quality of the [Moonrise Kingdom trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N8wkVA4_8s).

Spring at an elementary school: rooms plastered in rainbow paintings; the alphabet strung above chalkboards; books stacked in precarious piles; paper chains, a model of the solar system, desks arranged in a grid.

At the end of the main corridor: the auditorium, where behind titian-tinted curtains sits a row of fresh-faced, many-feathered, long-beaked children standing (like silver bells, like cockle shells) in a row. Some cannot remember their lines and fret; some cannot remember their lines and stare into space, elsewhere, unconcerned. A play about the animal kingdom now entering its second act. The winged flock shifting, sneezing, restless.

Steve, an art teacher for ten years, counting the crawling clock hands, waiting for the cue. He spent: a month of afternoons in the sunshine-scented library, painstakingly pursuing the sempiternal shelf of encyclopedias, gathering bird images to reference for costumes; and then, later, three months of sizing, cutting, sewing; buttons more valuable than coins, thread he tore with his teeth, the _chunka-chunka-chunka_ of an electric sewing machine, until the children were second only to true birds. 

A minute before the cue: the green-eyed librarian backstage, out of his element, standing far from the flock, long jacket and scarf, a strange man. He is: the keeper of letters, words, paragraphs; exclusively able to reach the highest bookshelf; very much in love with the art teacher, but never in all their years have they conceded this. 

“What,” he asks, “kind of bird are you?”

The sparrow at Steve’s side imperiously replies, “ _I’m_ a sparrow, and _she’s_ a dove, and—”

“No.” The look he gives Steve, sagacious, sincere. “I asked what kind of bird are _you_.”

No question mark at the end. A declaration though no declaration has been made.

The cue. An awkward group of birds shoved onto the stage, beneath bright, blazing beams, and the resulting applause of adoring, perplexed parents.

\---

The following morning: no librarian, no art teacher, Pepper Potts the Principal with a bullhorn in her hand, Thor sitting atop the highest bleacher, studying his little league team on the diamond.

Her voice, amplified, when she asks, “Aren’t you the least bit concerned your brother has run away?”

“That is a loaded question.” His frown from fifteen feet above her. “Obviously Steve Rogers is with him. We all knew it would happen eventually.”

The tiny town is saturated with: flat fields; a muted sky; clouds like cotton balls; denizens who _do not_ elope. These facts prompting Pepper Potts to report the duplicitous disappearance to their one-eyed deputy, who decides: “Until help arrives, I’m deputizing the principal, the big guy, and the red-haired lady.” A pause. “Where’s the library?”

Evidence discovered in the library, proof of Loki’s solid, scrupulous proposal: crinkled notes he left for Steve, stuffed between glitter-dusted encyclopedia pages ( _This is my plan_ ); Steve’s reply on cinnamon-colored construction scraps ( _My answer is yes_ ); Loki’s demand ( _When?_ ); Steve’s not-answer ( _Where?_ ); a map that is now missing, a set of instructions that the one-eyed deputy can’t find. Old-fashioned and resourceful, he takes a graphite gob from the art room and the notebook Loki left in his desk. A gentle back-and-forth on the first sheet a clean paper betrays the ghostly imprint of Loki’s last letter.

_Walk 400 yards from the baseball field to the dirt road that has no name. Bring only what you can carry. I will meet you in the meadow._

Within the half-hour, at the edge of the aforementioned meadow: an endless expanse of sky-scraping sunflowers, canary-colored and honey-hued, the path of broken stalks where Steve had ventured in. Pepper Potts the Principal, the big guy, and the red-haired lady look upon it: they can only press forward, following bits of prism-pigmented glitter that has clung to Steve for a decade, unintentionally brushed onto leaves as he moved past them the day before. On the other side of the meadow: a cobalt-blue lake, a tent now abandoned, a shredded sliver of linen on the shore. 

Thor (the big guy), says, admiringly, “Linen for sails. I believe my brother has built a boat!”

The one-eyed deputy, Pepper Potts the Principal, the big guy, and the red-haired lady forge their own gondola, piloting proudly to the opposite side, navigating as though endorsed by Neptune. They stumble upon: another campsite, the smell of kindle, footprints, hearts carved into a tree’s trunk, specks of glitter amongst the sand, a discarded map.

Unsuccessful, the return trip, the elementary school at twilight: pomegranate-pink, ochre-orange, plum-purple sky painted above their heads, flecked with sea salt stars, just like Steve’s watercolors.

\---

The next day: the entire school staff assembled, armed with compasses, the one-eyed deputy toting a pair of binoculars. Some head North; others head South, but the deputy and Pepper Potts the Principal go East, beyond the lake, and find: Steve Rogers’ motorcycle incautiously entrenched atop a pole; drawings in the sand; a very small church crowning a very small hill, run by Brother Stark, who recounts a librarian and an art teacher marrying in his chapel the day before. He describes one as pale and outlandish; the other as golden and easily provoked into laughter, leaving behind a book bursting with bird blueprints as a thank you for officiating on such short notice.

Further down the road: a deserted domicile built within the branches of a tree, a tall ladder, Pepper Potts the Principal climbing upwards, knocking on the door, no one inside to answer.

Pepper speaking through the bullhorn: “Steve Rogers, where the hell are you?”

\---

On the sixth day (a Monday): an early staff meeting. Pepper Potts the Principal on one end. To her left: the big guy, the red haired lady, Bruce the Soft-Spoken Science Teacher; to her right, Clint the Lowbrow Landscaper, the green-eyed librarian—

Pepper Potts choking on her coffee as she hastily hoists the bullhorn: “Where have you two _been_?”

Steve’s beaming smile, the rutilant ring on his finger as he proudly displays his hand.

“Honeymoon. We brought back presents for everyone.”

Shaking a shabby suitcase onto the table, out tumbles: corroded keys, ships in a bottle, clocks that don’t work, pale shells, copper-colored coins, birds’ nests, odds and ends happened upon, as though gifts will excuse both their absence.

Natasha (the red-haired lady) crabbily crossing her arms. “We looked everywhere for you.”

“Obviously you did not look _everywhere_ , if you did not find us,” Loki points out.

Pepper Potts the Principal brandishes the bullhorn, _click_ , preparing to argue the point with vigor and volume—

Silence. The creak of Clint’s chair; Natasha’s nails tapping against the tabletop; Steve and Loki so plainly pleased that Pepper ponders what she is precisely piqued about: the fact they hightailed it without a hint, or the fact she was blindsided by their bravado. She muses on the month Steve spent in that library, steadfastly studying in the soft hush, so intent on his project that the clock became inconsequential—and tart, testy Loki, willingly retrieving references for Steve’s benefit, even after midday melted into dusk.

 _Click_. “I suppose a congratulations is in order.”

A wayward sprinkle of glitter on Steve’s modest face. Loki neither smiling nor frowning (proof of his happiness).

\---

Spring at an elementary school: rooms plastered in rainbow paintings; the alphabet strung above chalkboards; books stacked in precarious piles; paper chains, a model of the solar system, desks arranged in a grid.

At one end of the hallway: the auditorium; at the other end: the sunshine-scented library, where Steve spends each afternoon with the green-eyed librarian just because he wants to (and because he loves him).

FIN.

_It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done._  
-Matthew Arnold


End file.
